All About Bluetooth 5 That You Need To Know

Finally, the Bluetooth 5 has arrived, let’s discuss some important things related to this latest Wireless technology!

Bluetooth is a wireless technology that is quite well known to everyone – old or young.

Even today, when we hear the term wireless communication or connectivity, the first thing that comes to our mind is Bluetooth. Bluetooth follows the ad-hoc concept i.e. it connects to other Bluetooth enabled device only when they are in physical proximity.

Here is what Executive Director of Bluetooth SIG, Mark Powell has to say about Bluetooth – “Bluetooth is a revolutionizing how people experience the IoT (Internet of Things).

Bluetooth 5 continues to drive this revolution by delivering reliable IoT connections and mobilizing the adoption of beacons, which in turn will decrease connection barriers and enable a seamless IoT experience. ”

Initially, Bluetooth was used as a medium for music, photo, video, etc. transfer. However, file transfer via Bluetooth is a very slow process.

As days went by, people came up with the alternative to file transfer as compared to Bluetooth. But that does not mean that Bluetooth lost its significance.

There are quite a number of application of Bluetooth 5. Another critical feature of Bluetooth is non-interference with any other wireless device running around.

Moreover, it should not consume much power. Bluetooth 5 will be updated in these 2 (and much more) areas. In this post, we will discuss the various uses in devices as well as the latest version i.e. Bluetooth 5.

Features Of Bluetooth 5

Range

Bluetooth goes back to 1997. As compared to the last versions of Bluetooth i.e. Bluetooth 4.0, 4.1 and 4.2, Bluetooth 5 range would be 4X more. In other words, Bluetooth 5 will range from 0 to ~120m.

Specs

The official figures won’t help you grasp much about Bluetooth 5; so here is a rough estimate of Bluetooth 5 specs. The speed of Bluetooth 5 is twice as much as Bluetooth 4.2; range would be four times as much as the previous one, and the capacity of broadcast messages would be eight times!

IoT

According to Wikipedia, IoT is the internetworking of physical devices, vehicles, buildings, and other items – embedded with electronics, software, sensors, actuators, and network connectivity that enable these objects to collect and exchange data.

We have mentioned IoT here as Bluetooth 5 will give a further boost to IoT. With the help of Bluetooth 5, Bluetooth-enabled devices will be able to transmit data from a single wearable device to multiple devices.

This way, one meter can send data to more than one multiple devices. Bluetooth 5 will also be able to transmit richer data. By more precious data, we refer to location, URL, media files, etc.

Speed

As mentioned earlier, the speed of Bluetooth is pretty low. It is small enough to make the users switch to other options like Wi-Fi Direct or in today’s time users prefer media sharing apps like Xender, ShareIt, etc.

These apps can transfer huge chunks of data over a couple of minutes. The Bluetooth 5 speeds is expected to be twice as much as the Bluetooth 4.2v.

However, there are very fewer chances of people using this wireless connectivity as a medium of file transfer. On the other hand, this Bluetooth 5 speed can be used to better its connection with other devices for IoT.

Audio

Before talking about Bluetooth 5 audio devices, let’s talk about Bluetooth audio. There are some amazing Bluetooth headphones available in the market. These headphones are in-the-ear as well as on-the-ear.

Besides, our favorite one is the Bluetooth speakers. These are rechargeable speakers which can run for 4-5 hours on one full charge.

There are some low-end speakers which are priced in the range ~Rs. 1,500 – ~Rs. 2,000. If you are a music lover, you can go for higher priced speakers from the same company.

Sadly, Bluetooth 5 audio is not something that is being worked upon. The developers are more focused on other aspects of the Bluetooth such as IoT, speed, capacity, less power usage, etc.

I’m not hoping to see any devices running on Bluetooth 5 any soon. If you have conflicting views, do share them in the comments below.

Devices

Bluetooth devices are everywhere. To name a few would be – car, headsets, handsets, wearable devices and audio devices.

Bluetooth 5 devices have not yet hit the markets. Although Bluetooth 5 was launched in mid-2016, it is very strange that it has not made way to any of the smartphones yet.

Even if we consider the premium smartphones from the big daddies of the smartphone industry, we still don’t see any hint of this technology.

There is no news of it being integrated into any smartphone. Hopefully, we might catch some Bluetooth 5 devices at the MWC (Mobile World Congress) or CES (Consumer Electronic Show).

Bottom Lines

That’s all about Bluetooth 5 from my end. So, with this latest version of Bluetooth, you can connect the devices at the long distances and able to transfer the data faster between the gadgets. Also, you can keep the Bluetooth ON on your devices without any worry about the decreasing battery life.

So, are you excited to see the Bluetooth’s recent version on the mobile devices in 2017 with the enhanced broadcasting message capability? Leave you valuable thoughts and if you want to add your bits to the article, share them in the comments below.